A sign of things to come?...
Wednesday, January 3, 2007 at 10:13PM
Jon in ATNI, BIDU, EDDU, HMIN, MR, POWL, ROS

First trading day of the year, it sure was rocky, to say the least.    What began as a all out rosy day turned into a scary moment in the afternoon but only to be saved by an uptick during the last half hour.    Volatility is in the air and we can smell it.   Some of the momentum stocks reversed intraday and got hit hard and some struggled hard to hold their ground.    Boys and girls, welcome to the new year!   One thing that we are sure of, regardless which sector is working today and which sector is not, the action we've seen from the market today is caused by the exact same players that were playing these same sectors a few days ago, or a few weeks ago, or a few months ago.    Blame on the Fed Minute, blame on the oil, or we can simply blame ourselves for creating such big volatility.

When it comes to trading stocks, what we are really doing is not trading the stocks themselves, but rather we are trading against the people behind those stocks.   It's a competition and it's a game and majority ALWAYS have the right saying in a stock.   We have to accept it.    So when the market turns intraday today and even the mighty FXI could not hold its ground,  we have to accept the fact of what's happening and act accordingly.  SELL..   How many times have we seen a +100 Dow day reversed into a -40?   Not many times!   This of course raises our caution level considerably and therefore we have to act accordingly.    There's no pride in this game, it's just about survival.   When you can actively survive in this game for a long time, it means that you have done something right and it also means you probably have won a lot.  Ok enough of this philosophical crap and lets move on to some real actions... lol

China stocks, namely the ones we track, HMIN EDU MR and BIDU (more for the trader) all had a relatively good day.    Even though MR and HMIN did not finish near their high of the day but given how bullish we were on those stocks last week, we all should have had some to lock in for some profit and /or if you played our idea off yesterdays Journal that these might catch a bid, especially with the FXI gapping up 3+ points premarket and these not far off Fridays close.  EDU was still left behind 15 minutes into the trading day and so we tossed out this idea at $34.20's.  We still like HMIN alot and think this one is definitely in play, given the recent surge in volume.    We are very much in the camp of buying aggressively on dips for HMIN while adding lightly on strength.   Why?  Well it seems this is how this thing has been rewarding us so far and there's no reason to change the strategy.    MR, some dude's been putting an iron lid  on this thing at $26.    When so much firepower has been absorbed at $26 and stock wouldn't go any higher, we think it would've dropped even without the index help.    Give it some more room to work, buying dip also works well with this one.   Both EDU and BIDU looked pretty good at the close and both showed that they are busting their respective downtrend.   We are definitely keeping a close  eye on all these four stocks and looking for opportunity to add.     One word of caution though, we are only playing the quality China stocks at this point and there's really no need to spend our time or capital onto other " wannabe runners".    We do make FFHL as an exception since we are familiar with its play and it's also very much in play still.

One thing you might use now is the FXI, today you saw how hand in hand this acted with our quality china stocks..just look at 10min chart comparison.  It reversed...it played with the gap, it turned and DJIM's followed the whole way!

ATNI, this one for some reason had a late push and we alerted all our readers on its break out.    We don't know what caused the surge but we were following the action.    The volume is very good on the breakout and this one has had a pretty strong basing action last little while.   If this one follows up, we are likely to add more.  See the chart up that showed this was not far from breaking out and should have been on radar.

POWL, we alerted this one earlier also and thought it had a chance to breakout.   Unfortunately it suffered a reversal as every other stock did an hour later and did not close anywhere near the high.    We still think this one has potential and the close today only put it right in the middle of that tight trading range.   We'd keep a close eye on this one.

ABM, it's almost hard to believe that a stock can consolidate for so long within a 50 cent range.   Only from NYSE perhaps!   Given the surge in trading volume ever since it released earning, we think that this play is far from over.    Once the institutions establish a trading base and enough shares get exchanged hands, the next step should be higher rather than lower.    We'll see if it creeps back above 9 ema next couple of days to assault for a new high or not.

ROS, well there's really nothing we want to say other than noticing "who's in charge today"!.  Seems just yesterday it was alerted at just under $38 as a play off the other Russian telcos.

The bottom line, earning season is almost upon us and it's ok to have some volatility going into the earning.    Again, we've said this prior to last earning quarter that market rarely crashes before the start of an earning season.     At this point, we are trading smalerl sizes and taking advantage of some hot sectors and a few tradable opportunities while we wait for the earning season to start.   When a really good opportunity comes along during the earning season, we'd pounce on it hard with all we got and put another 25%+ gainer on the plate.

 
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